The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America installed the Reverend Yehiel Curry as its first Black presiding bishop during a ceremony at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. Curry, 53, became the fifth person to lead the denomination, beginning a six-year term that formally started on October 1.
Delegates elected Curry at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Phoenix on July 30. He succeeded the Reverend Elizabeth Eaton, who led the church for 12 years and was its first woman presiding bishop. Curry had previously served as bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, one of the denomination's 65 regional bodies, in the city where the ELCA maintains its headquarters.
His installation marked a significant change for a church rooted historically in Scandinavian and German immigrant communities and concentrated in the Upper Midwest. The supplied reports say the ELCA is more than 95% white by some measures. Curry expressed hope that visible leadership would help people from underrepresented communities imagine themselves in comparable roles, while church colleagues emphasized that representation would need institutional support to produce lasting change.
Curry was born on Chicago's South Side, the seventh of 11 children. He grew up Catholic, attended Catholic schools through college, then worked as a social worker and public-school teacher. His route into Lutheran ministry began through Shekinah Chapel, whose mentoring program for Black boys and young men attracted his interest as an educator. The congregation grew from an ELCA program into an established church, and Curry progressed from lay leadership to seminary and ordination in 2009.
He trained through the Theological Education for Emerging Ministries program, which prepares ministers for ethnic-specific, multicultural, rural and inner-city settings. Curry said one priority would be strengthening connections between congregations and higher levels of church governance. He framed that work as deepening goals the denomination had already adopted around being welcoming, connected and sustainable.
The new presiding bishop inherited challenges affecting many mainline Protestant bodies. ELCA membership has fallen from 5.3 million when the denomination formed through a merger in 1988 to 2.7 million. The church has also experienced theological debate over LGBTQ+ inclusion. Since 2009 it has blessed same-sex marriages and accepted LGBTQ+ clergy, later electing openly gay and openly transgender regional bishops.
Curry's elevation did not make him the first Black person to hold high Lutheran office in the United States. Earlier leaders included Nelson Wesley Trout, the first Black ELCA synod bishop, and Will Herzfeld, presiding bishop of an ELCA predecessor body. His installation nevertheless broke a barrier in the current denomination's top role and placed questions of membership, diversity and institutional cohesion at the center of his term.
